Time Travel
"Time is delicate. And those who alter it, those who prod and pick at the timeline, in turn, aid in it's destruction." : —Chronos, the God of Time. : Time travel is a concept in the multiverse that involves physical and temporal teleportation within a universes history without directly affecting other universes. Time travel is not without consequences, resulting in multiple possible, or at least altered, timelines. The mechanics of time travel differ in most cases between that of speedsters and technological time ships, as used by the Time Force and The Jericho. A specific timeline is considered the "main" or "true" timeline, and is protected by Haruko and the Time Force, and in some cases The Jericho, from possible alterations. : Overview : "Time has an answer for everything, and it works in unpredictable ways. Figure I'd prefer not to mess with it." : —Strife Kurosaki Methods of Travel Time can be ventured through with the use of futuristic transport, such as a time machine or a Time Ship, like the the Time Ship used by Haruko Hitomi. Strife Kurosaki designed and built the first Time Ship, originally for use of Isamu Hitomi, who was travelling through time with his daughter, Haruko. As proven by Tyler White, time travel can also be accomplished through magic. Speedsters commonly enter the Time Stream by exceeding the speed of light. Alternate Timeline vs Alternate Universe While there are an infinite number of universes, each universe also has an infinite number of timelines. For instance, in Velocity Season 2, Velocity (Thomas Tybalt) traveled to an alternate timeline of Mobius-1 rather than an alternate universe altogether. He did this by running through the Time Stream, which gives access to all timelines, and all universes. However, the timeline where most of the OCVerse stories take place is deemed the "true" timeline by Chronos, and is the timeline Haruko risk her life to protect. Altering the Timeline Altering the past in a major way sends ripples throughout time. As Strife theorizes, time pretty much decides what a "major change" is and what a "minor change" is, and while in most cases the difference may be easy to predict, time (Chronos) still has the final say. Earth's Velocity (Miles Trainer) experienced this when he went back in time a few hours to stop himself from encountering a villain. When he came back to the present, he learned that the villain encountered Crescendo instead, and paralyzed him. When the "true" timeline is altered, it's inhabitants have lived their entire lives, though to a time traveler their lives would have just started recently. This is addressed when Velocity (Thomas Tybalt) first made a major alteration to the timeline, and that alternate timeline's Strife stated. "Sorry, no, I've lived my whole life, didn't just start it a day ago." However, when the "true" timeline is fixed, things go on as normal. By traveling to the past, one is already ''altering the timeline by simply ''being in the past, ''as originally, they weren't there. Haruko Hitomi noted that when was an inexperienced time traveler, time would mess with her the longer she was temporally displaced. As in, she would get visions, obstacles would prevent her from doing certain things, and in extreme cases she would contract sicknesses. Apparently, this is a tactic Chronos used when he was stuck at the End of Time and could not physically hunt people down. Again, back to when Velocity originally altered the timeline and created the timeline where Alan was a dictator. The longer Velocity stayed in the alternate timeline, the more memories of the original timeline he lost. Simply put, his memories of the original timeline were being replaced with memories of his life in the altered timeline. Altering the future is different, because, by the logic of time travel, ''your future can only truly be altered in the present. ''After Alan the Dragon accidentally traveled to the future and saw the death of The Shadow Avenger (Celeste Shizuki), he wanted to go back and stop the event from happening, but since it happened in the future, Strife explained that they could only prevent it by their actions in the present. Because, like Strife said, the future is always in ''flux, as in, it's always changing based on what's happening in the present. Predestination Paradox, Time Loops, and Set Times A predestination paradox (also called causal loop, causality loop, and (less frequently) closed loop or closed time loop) is a paradox of time travel that exists when a time traveler is caught in a loop of events that "predestines" or "predates" them traveling back in time. Because of the possibility of influencing the past while time traveling, one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened must happen. A time traveler attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be playing their part in shaping history as we already know it, not changing it (or that the time traveler's personal knowledge of history already includes their future travels to their own experience of the past). A number of time travel attempts into the past to change effects of a future end up causing said future to happen in the first place. This is seen when Terminal Velocity travels to the future, learns of his wife's death, travels back to the present and tries to prevent it, only to set up the events that eventually lead to her death. There are also 'set' times in history, things that cannot be changed without catastrophic consequences to the timeline. These include Salvador's attempted extinction of the human race, The Life and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the personal timeline of Haruko Hitomi, among many others. Trying to change any of these set events will put the perpetrator in great danger; when Satoru Hitomi went back in time and attempted to prevent his sister from going on her first trip through time with their father, Satoru's younger self was almost completely eradicated by random events set up by time, which, in turn, would have erased him from existence. It is impossible to change set times directly without grave consequences. Co-existing : "You're me... from the future?" : "Uh, let's say... at Strife from a future, yeah." : "Sweet!" : —Thomas Tybalt (2010) and Thomas Tybalt (2015) : Although it's very dangerous (Strife predicts a 20-50 percent chance that a time paradox could happen), it is very possible for a time traveler to come in contact with either a past or future version of themselves, and occupy the same time and space. Category:Concepts